Polanyi's great insight is that laissez-faire capitalism goes hand in hand with an interventionist, bureaucratic state. From Occupy Wall Street to the camp outside St Paul's cathedral and elsewhere, the protesters are aware of this much more so than the ruling elites. Locally and globally there is an inchoate sense that big business and big government have colluded at the expense of the people. Both states and markets are disembedded from society. Interpersonal relationships are replaced by coercive laws and commercial contracts, as Polanyi was first to recognise.

This is not just a moral outrage but also a form of heresy. The problem is not just that the high priests of global finance preach a new creed, which worships false idols. Capitalism may look like a cheap ersatz religion, but its consequences are far worse than the spectacle of fake fetishes.

The capitalist economy redefines the sacred in ways that destroy the sanctity of life and land. Capital, which is disembedded from social relations and civic bonds, sunders material objects from their moral meaning and symbolic significance. This also has the effect of separating responsibility from both risk-taking and reward. In the pursuit of wealth, capitalism disconnects getting rich from doing good.

In this manner, it reduces everything and everyone to little more than tradable commodities at the going market price.

Thus, capitalism profanes the sacred and sacralises the profane – a modern radicalisation of the moneylenders who desecrated the Temple and were expelled by Jesus of Nazareth.

Amid the moral crisis of global capitalism, Christianity and other world religions offer some of the most transformative ideas and practices. Faiths enjoin their followers to impose ethical and civic limits on the activity of businesses. The prohibition of gambling and usurious interests rates are not merely matters of private choice but must be applied to global finance in the public interest.